"Algebra" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when these bundles are distinctly isolated by appropriate nouns, the process of arranging and codifying according to the simple relations indicated by the copula is greatly facilitated. The ideal language would resemble algebra, in which symbols, each representing a given numerical value, are connected by the smallest possible number of symbols of operation, , -, , and so forth. To set two such statements side by side, or to modify them by ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... Fleda," said Thorn, "I should want to brush up my Algebra considerably before I could hope to find x, y, and z in such a ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Once, whilst playing at the Court Theatre, he noticed the call-boy constantly poring over a book. Cecil, glancing over it, was surprised to find that it was not The Boy Highwayman of Hampstead, but a treatise on Algebra. The call-boy told him that he was endeavouring to educate himself, with a view to going out to India. Cecil bought him quite a library of books, paid for a series of classes for him, and eventually, thanks to Cecil, the call-boy passed second ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... in which a man and a schoolmaster could be placed. I often wrought for hours together at this likeness, nor was it long before I made myself so much master of the outline that I could have drawn it in any situation whatever, almost off hand. I then took M'Gill's account book of algebra home with me, and at my leisure put down a number of gross caricatures of Mr. Wilson here and there, several of them in situations notoriously ludicrous. I waited the discovery of this treasure with ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... thoughts on paper in clear and grammatical (to say nothing of good or elegant) language. The "ciphering" of the lower schools expands into elementary mathematics in the higher; into arithmetic, with a little algebra, a little Euclid. But I doubt if one boy in five hundred has ever heard the explanation of a rule of arithmetic, or knows his Euclid ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... In its most ancient form it is named "Kufic." There are only symbols for sixteen out of its twenty-eight consonants. Certain of our own words own patronymity from the Arabic languages—words such as algebra, alcohol, zenith, nadir, etc. These show clearly that the language did influence early intellectual European ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... character of the language, and, intimately connected, as it is, with the grammatical system of the Arabs, it appears to me quite worthy of the acumen of a people, to whom, amongst other things, we owe the invention of Algebra, the stepping-stone of our whole modern system of Mathematics I cannot refrain, therefore, from concluding with a little anecdote anent al-Khalil, which Ibn Khallikan tells in the following words. His son went one day into the room where ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... shall loathe the Tories, And monks be tired of telling beads, And Blues of telling stories; And titled suitors shall be crossed, And famished poets married, And Canning's motion shall be lost, And Hume's amendment carried; And Chancery shall cease to doubt, And Algebra to prove, And hoops come in, and gas go out ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... WONDERFUL BO-OY!"—In the Head-Master's Guide for November, in the list of applicants for Masterships, appears a gentleman who offers to teach Mathematics, Euclid, Arithmetic, Algebra, Natural Science, History, Geography, Book-keeping, French Grammar, Freehand, and Perspective Drawing, the Piano, the Organ, and the Harmonium, and Singing, for the modest salary of L20 a-year without ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various
... minds of the pupils. In our primary schools they have insisted upon nothing but reading and writing, with just a smattering of arithmetic by way of science. In our secondary schools they have insisted upon nothing but Greek and Latin, with about an equal leaven of algebra and geometry. This mediaeval fare (I am delighted that I can thus agree for once with Professor Ray Lankester) they have thrust down the throats of all the world indiscriminately; so much so that nowadays people seem hardly able at last to conceive of any other ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... in the following propositions (consider propositions always with your class as the audience): (1) "Physics, Chemistry, and Algebra Are Hard Studies." (2) "Only Useful Studies Should Be Taught in This School." (3) "All Women Should Be Allowed to Vote and Should Be Compelled by Law to Remove Their Hats in Church." (4) "Agricultural Conditions in Abyssinia Are Superior to ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... machine, as is to do anythin' from simple addition to fractions, an' he says if it works well he'll carry it on to algebra an' mathematics, up to the fizmal calc'lus, or somethin' o' that sort. Oh, you've no notion how he strains himself at it. He sits down in his shirt-sleeves at a writin'-table he's got in a corner, ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... note C to D, the interval is equal to an inch; and from D to E, the same."—Music of Nature, p. 293. "We have only to imagine the G clef placed below it."—Ib. Any of their forms may be used for such purposes, but the custom of each science determines our choice. Thus Algebra employs small Italics; Music, Roman capitals; Geometry, for the most part, the same; Astronomy, Greek characters; and Grammar, in some part or other, every sort. Examples: "Then comes answer like an ABC book."—Beauties of Shakspeare, p. 97. "Then comes question like ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... caps. She herself was something of a princess turned into a swine-girl in her own imagination. And she was afraid lest this boy, who, nevertheless, looked something like a Walter Scott hero, who could paint and speak French, and knew what algebra meant, and who went by train to Nottingham every day, might consider her simply as the swine-girl, unable to perceive the princess beneath; ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... the mathematicians, in their cold calculation, reduced music to the utilitarianism of algebra, and even viewed it as a kind of medicine for the nerves and mind. When we think of the music of Pythagoras and his school, we seem to be in a kind of laboratory in which all the tones are labelled and have their special directions for use. For the legend runs that he composed melodies ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... clothed, booked, furnished with pocket-money, provided with all necessaries, instructed in all languages living and dead, mathematics, orthography, geometry, astronomy, trigonometry, the use of the globes, algebra, single stick (if required), writing, arithmetic, fortification, and every other branch of classical literature. Terms, twenty guineas per annum. No extras, no vacations, and diet unparalleled. Mr Squeers is in town, and attends daily, from one till four, at the Saracen's ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... some reason she wanted to listen. She was really curious about the field. But, gee, how did he expect her to understand all that stuff? He sounded like her algebra teacher, or was it chemistry? Lord, how she'd hated school. Maybe she shouldn't ...
— The Very Secret Agent • Mari Wolf
... human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas, and Matters of Fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of Geometry, Algebra, and Arithmetic; and in short, every affirmation which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain. That the square of the hypothenuse is equal to the square of the two sides, is a proposition which expresses a relation between ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... new light was struck by Harriott and Descartes, with their contemporaries, or immediate predecessors, and the restoration of ancient geometry, aided by the modern invention of algebra, placed the science of mechanism on the philosophic throne. How widely this domination spread, and how long it continued, if, indeed, even now it can be said to have abdicated its pretensions, the reader need not be reminded. The sublime discoveries of Newton, and, ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... high-road. The curriculum included Latin Grammar—nobody ever got to the reading of books in that formidable tongue—French by an English lady who had been in France, Hanoverian German by an irascible native, the more seemly aspects of English history and literature, arithmetic, algebra, political economy and drawing. There was no hockey played within the precincts, science was taught without the clumsy apparatus or objectionable diagrams that are now so common, and stress was laid upon the carriage ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... as boating, foot-ball, and the like, Professor Wogglebug had invented an assortment of Tablets of Learning. One of these tablets, eaten by a scholar after breakfast, would instantly enable him to understand arithmetic or algebra or any other branch of mathematics. Another tablet eaten after lunch gave a student a complete knowledge of geography. Another tablet made it possible for the eater to spell the most difficult words, and still another ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... teachers, it gives me pleasure to add, are not only superior scholars in the common English branches, but they have made respectable attainments in philosophy, astronomy, chemistry, algebra, Latin, etc. All of these branches are successfully taught in a few ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... darkness (right Dickens) of Tom-All-Alone's Or the Morgue out in Paris, where tragedy centuples Life's effects by Death's algebra, Shakespeare (Malone's) Might have said sleep was murdered—new scholiasts have sent you pills To purge text ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... with me, none of you have, and I don't remember picking it up after we slumped down there in the shade. Consequently I must have left it there. There's no other solution. It's like one of those queer problems in geometry, or is it algebra, where things that are equal to the same thing are equal to each other," and she laughed with ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... American history did a Chairman keep his head and his temper so admirably as did Mr. Root on this occasion. His intellect, burning with a cold, white light,illumined every point, but betrayed no heat of passion. He applied the rules as impartially as if they were theorems of algebra. Time after time the Rooseveltians protested against the holders of contested seats to vote, but he was unmoved because the rule prescribed that the person had a right to vote. When the contests were taken ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... in an angry manner. "I am sick and tired of the way my Sex is always reproached as having nothing to do. If you consider French and music and Algebra and History and English composition nothing, as well as keeping house and having children and atending to social ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... street-talk; and—provided only the boy has resources, and is of a noble and ingenuous strain—these will not serve him less than the books. He learns chess, whist, dancing, and theatricals. The father observes that another boy has learned algebra and geometry in the same time. But the first boy has acquired much more than these poor games along with them. He is infatuated for weeks with whist and chess; but presently will find out, as you did, that, when he rises from the game too long played, he is vacant and forlorn, and despises ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... Bobbie, quit that algebra and come on out! You've stuck at it a full hour already. What's the use of cramming any more? You'll get through the exam all right; you know you always do," protested Van Blake as he flipped a scrap of blotting paper across the study table ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... maps of that period whence they had received geographical impressions, strangely antiquated now. Along one side of the room ran a black-board, on which they had been wont to demonstrate their ignorance of algebra and geometry to the complete satisfaction of the master, while behind them as they sat was a row of recitation benches, associated with so many a ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... for your algebra and your trigonometry?" he one day observed. "I take my John Norie and my Gunter's Scale, and I work out my day's work as well as any man; and what more should I want to know, tell me? Your mathematicians are all humbugs in my opinion, and ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... point in Emerson's remark that "Mysticism consists in the mistake of an accidental and occasional symbol for an universal one," then, in speaking to the psycho-analyst, the psychologist should echo Emerson further, and say: "Let us have a little algebra instead of this trite rhetoric— universal signs instead of these village symbols—and ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... "Hydraulic Architecture" of Prony, the "Mecanique Analytique," and the "Mecanique Celeste." This excellent man often gave me useful advice; but I must say that I found my real master in the cover of M. Garnier's "Treatise on Algebra." This cover consisted of a printed leaf, on the outside of which blue paper was pasted. The reading of the page not covered made me desirous to know what the blue paper hid from me. I took off this paper carefully, ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... course of time the Arabs invaded Spain and forced upon the unwilling inhabitants of Europe such instrumentalities of higher civilization as arithmetic and algebra, soap and sugar. Later the Spaniards by an act of equally unwarranted and beneficent aggression carried the sugar cane to the Caribbean, where it thrived amazingly. The West Indies then became a rival of the East Indies as a treasure-house of tropical wealth and for several centuries ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... increased to twelve. The mental fare set before this little company consisted of the traditional classical curriculum, which differed not at all from the ordinary college course of those days in spite of the progressive spirit of the founders. For the Freshmen, Livy, Xenophon, and algebra occupied the first term. Horace, Thucydides, Herodotus, and Roman antiquities, more algebra, geometry and botany, the second term; while Horace, Homer, geometry, mensuration, and the application of algebra to geometry completed the year. More Greek and ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... than a month afterwards I was bending over my Algebra in the study hall of the dear old Abbey, striving most perseveringly to master an obstinate, unknown quantity that baffled me considerably. I did not suspect that I was then setting myself a double task of this nature, or that ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... industrial schools or military schools—any kind of schools that they were not. And how clearly it was being demonstrated, we were told, that the time formerly spent on music and drawing, art and literature, algebra and geometry, history and Latin, had all been wasted! How much better it would have been if, instead of these "frills," the children had been given "practical subjects"! (Practical. Save the mark. One is tempted here to go off on a by-path and discuss the topic, "What is Practical?") ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... darkened with the coming of evening, the boy whose mountain nature cried out for exercise went for long tramps that carried him over many miles of city pavements, and after that, when the gas was lit, he turned, still insatiably hungry, to volumes of history, and algebra, and facts. So gluttonous was his protege's application that the painter felt called on to remonstrate against the danger of overwork. But Samson only laughed; that was one of the things he had learned to do ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... He has but its phantom, which he created himself in a vain effort to understand, and which he supposes to be it. Love cannot be argued about in its absence, for there is no reflex, no symbol of it near enough to the fact of it, to admit of just treatment by the algebra of the reason or imagination. Indeed, the very talking about it raises a mist between the mind and the vision of it. But let a man once love, and all those difficulties which appeared opposed to love, will just be ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... started the demand for painkiller in your insides, or to guess, next morning, which one made you believe in a personal devil the night before. And so, while a fellow can't figure out to an ounce whether it's Latin or algebra or history or what among the solids that is building him up in this place or that, he can go right along feeding them in and betting that they're not the things that turn his tongue fuzzy. It's down among the sweets, among ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... no mathematics higher than elementary algebra and geometry is introduced; in the foot-notes and in the Appendix an occasional trigonometric formula appears, for the benefit of the very considerable number of high school students who understand such expressions. This fact should be particularly noted, for it is a special aim of ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... Clairauts, the Fontaines, the D'Alemberts, the Lagranges have left it. They will have fixed the Pillars of Hercules. People will go no further." Those who have read Comte's angry denunciations of the perversions of geometry by means of algebra, and of the waste of intellectual force in modern analysis,[210] will at least understand how such a view as Diderot's was possible. And no one will be likely to deny that, whether or not the pillars of the geometrical Hercules were finally set a hundred years ago, the great discoveries ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... not here refer to the fact that all quantities, as such, are subject to the rules of arithmetic and algebra, and are therefore capable of being submitted to those dry calculations which represent, to so many minds, their ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... her mind. The struggle must come some time, and she longed to have it over as soon as possible. She threw up the sash, seated herself on the broad cedar window-sill, and began to work out a sum in Algebra. Nearly a half-hour passed; the slamming of the dining-room door was like the first line of foam, curling and whitening the sea when the tempest sweeps forward; her father stamped into the library, and the ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... "I want to go to a convent in Paris. I know a girl right here in Indianapolis who did that, and it's perfectly fine and ever so romantic. To get into college you have to know algebra, ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... "These are the Algebra Pills," said the Professor, taking down one of the bottles. "One at night, on retiring, is equal to four hours of study. Here are the Geography Pills—one at night and one in the morning. In this next ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... inquiries have assured us that no more blood was shed than if the parties to the strife had been a Canadian and a Fenian. We will, therefore, drop the subject, and enter at once upon the flowery path of the first lesson in algebra." ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... I mean to be, that's certain. There's nothing I hate like vulgarity. That's why I can't stand Roper. When he beat me in mathematics last midsummer, I felt so ashamed I could hardly bear myself. I'm working like a nigger at algebra and Euclid this half, just because I think it would almost kill me to be beaten ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... so much on the stretch, that the habit of doing what she was doing, and nothing else, had become second nature to the docile and duteous girl; and she had become little sensible to interruptions; so she went on with her German, her Greek, and her algebra, scarcely hearing the repetitions of the lessons, or the counting as Miss Fennimore presided over Maria's practice, a bit of drudgery detested by the governess, but necessarily persevered in, for Maria loved music, and had just voice and ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... losing a moment,' he is a lost man. Great men are eager to find an hour, and not to avoid losing a moment. 'What are you doing' said somebody once (as I heard the tradition) to the beautiful Lady Oxford as she sate in her open carriage on the race-ground—'Only a little algebra,' said she. People who do a little algebra on the race-ground are not likely to do much of anything with ever so many hours for meditation. Why, you must agree with me in all this, so I shall not be sententious any longer. Mending stockings is not exactly the sort of ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... professor, and then because he saw Elnora was desperately embarrassed he proceeded to lend her a book and to ask her if she had studied algebra. She said she had a little, but not the same book they were using. He asked her if she felt that she could do the work they were beginning, and she said ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... this tale was told both of Erinnys and of Saranyu. Granting the certainty of the etymological equation, SaranyuErinnys (which Mannhardt doubted), the chances against fortuitous coincidence may be reckoned by algebra, and Mr. Edgeworth's trillions of trillions feebly express it. Two goddesses, Indian and Greek, have, ex hypothesi, the same name, and both, as mares, are mothers of twins. Though the twins (in India the Asvins, in Greek an ideal war-horse and a girl) differ in character, still the coincidence ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... merely to refer to it," said Miss Hurd. "Especially when you know that I never could pass beginner's algebra." ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... initiate a system of higher education in this farmhouse, she did not clearly see. Drawing was a simple thing enough; but how was she to propose teaching languages, or suggest algebra, or insist upon history? She must wait, and feel her way; and in the meantime she scattered books about her room, books chosen with some care, to act as baits; hoping so by and by to catch her fish. Meanwhile she made herself very agreeable in the family; and that without any particular ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... well acquainted with his usual scratches and dots, and having a good memory, could put him right when he was puzzled with some misshapen x or z, representing some unknown quantity, like the same letters in algebra. ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... you are wrong there," said the lady, with a little silvery laugh. "They are not a profitless amusement. Why, a man has to keep his brains in good trim when he plays cards, and whist is just as good a mental exercise as geometry and algebra, or any other study where the mind is engaged upon various problems. You see I stand up for cards, for I teach whist myself and I assure you that many of the leading ladies of this city spend their time in little else than whist, which they would not do if ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... was greater Than Tycho Brahe or Erra Pater: For he, by geometrick scale, Could take the size of pots of ale; Resolve, by sines and tangents, straight, If bread or butter wanted weight; And wisely tell what hour o' th' day The clock does strike by algebra. ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle equals four times the area of the triangle, plus the square of the difference of the other two sides." This principle has been known to mathematicians by means of arithmetic and algebra, but has never before, we believe, been reduced to a geometrical demonstration. The demonstration of this principle by Mr. Smith is one of the clearest, simplest, and most beautiful in Geometry. The work ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... doubly debarred from retaining it in your pilgrim's scrip, by reason of having neither scrip nor mammon—under such circumstances, I say, would n't you be very likely to take the sunset on your left, and swim for the north bank, without doing an equation in algebra to find out which way the river ought to run? That is what I did. It never occurred to my mind that Victoria could be on the north ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... a golden rule, and which, when he read the philosophical works of others, he applied most carefully to himself. If an unlearned individual takes up a book, and, on opening it, finds by certain characters that it is a book on Algebra, he modestly puts, it down with perhaps an equally modest observation. "I never learned the Mathematics, and am ignorant of them: they are not suited to my taste, and I do not require them." But if perchance, he should take up a philosophical ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... Xenophon, no algebra, that day! Dire was the distress of my poor dominie when he found the mother as much bewildered as the daughter was frightened, by the mistake. 'She,' the daughter, 'had never for a moment ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... French volume, and had the wear-and-tear of pleading my case for the custody of my daughter in the Court of Appeal, as well as the case before the Master of the Rolls; and I found it the very greatest relief to turn to algebra, geometry, and physics, and forget the harassing legal struggles in wrestling with formulae and problems. The full access I gained to my children marked a step in the long battle of Freethinkers against disabilities, for, as noted in the National Reformer by Mr. Bradlaugh, it was ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... brethren (of a society). die dies (for coining or stamping), dice (for play). fish fishes (separate fish), fish (collective). index indexes (in books), indices (in algebra). penny pennies (separate coins), pence (sum of money). shot shots (discharges), shot (balls). staff staves (poles), ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... line, that came marching into prayers every morning he would frequently pull out a boy, administer a loud whack or two, shake him violently and force him into a seat. The day I began my studies at the Academy I saw him put two dents in the wall with the heels of a young man who had failed in his algebra. To a bashful and sensitive youth, just out of a country home, the sight of such violence was appalling. My first talk with him, however, renewed my courage. He had heard I was a good scholar and talked with me in a friendly ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... The book was Wentworth's Algebra—elementary principles. Painful recollections of my boyhood and the binomial theorem rose in my mind as I let the leaves turn under my fingers. "What do you make ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... up Latin and Greek and French and German, and Algebra and Geometry and Chemistry and Mechanics, as well ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... known of Thomas Hariot; his only published works are the 'Briefe and true report' (PG4247) and the posthumous 'Praxis', a handbook of algebra. He anticipated the law of refraction, corresponded with Kepler, observed comets, and may have been the first to recognize that the straight line paths of comets might be segments of elongated ellipses. The lost 'ephemera' referred to in the text have since ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... five useful years, coming back to her fond father's soldier roof a winsome picture of girlish health and grace and comeliness—a girl who could ride, walk and run if need be, who could bake and cook, mend and sew, cut, fashion and make her own simple wardrobe; who knew algebra, geometry and "trig" quite as well as, and history, geography and grammar far better than, most of the young West Pointers; a girl who spoke her own tongue with accuracy and was not badly versed in French; ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... are discovering new things. Then dates will keep accumulating just as they have always been in the habit of doing. Possibly a new specimen of that detestable type of humanity, Euclid, will arise, and perhaps some conscienceless villain may invent a more complicated system of mathematics than algebra. You never can tell what may happen in 3000 years. So the small boy of 1893 may congratulate himself that he is not the small boy ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... to know, and all we need to do, from books and teachers that are not perfect. We have no absolutely perfect books on Grammar, Rhetoric, or Logic. Yet men learn those sciences readily enough when they study them heartily and diligently. We have no perfect systems of Arithmetic, Geometry, or Algebra; of Geography, Astronomy, or Geology; of Anatomy, Physiology, or Chemistry; of Botany, Natural History, or Physical Geography. Yet on all those subjects men gather an immense amount of knowledge, make a multitude of new discoveries, and arrive ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... the three R's; but occasionally a newcomer who had somewhere picked up a smattering of algebra, Latin, or astronomy stirred the wonder, if not also the suspicion, of the neighborhood. Schoolbooks were few and costly; crude slates were made from pieces of shale; pencils were fashioned from varicolored soapstone found in the beds of small streams. ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... of ancient Aryavarta, seven principles are evolved out of these three primary entities. Algebra teaches us that the number of combinations of n things, taken one at a time, two at a time, three at a time, and ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... the movements of the stars through eternity. Persons who could not calculate an eclipse to save their souls, have risked them upon the notion that, because astronomers can do so with considerable accuracy, farmers ought to reject the Bible, unless its predictions can be calculated by algebra. It may do such persons good, or at least prevent them from doing others harm, to take a cursory view of the errors of astronomers; errors necessary as well ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... what object has he in all this? The pleasure of bragging to-morrow among his friends that he has played better than another. So others sweat in their own rooms to show to the learned that they have solved a problem in algebra, which no one had hitherto been able to solve. Many more expose themselves to extreme perils, in my opinion as foolishly, in order to boast afterwards that they have captured a town. Lastly, others wear themselves out in studying all these ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... which action is imperative, and you have elements of strife sufficient to reduce that fair kingdom of his to utter anarchy and madness. Yet so little, do we know ourselves, and so different are the symbols with which the imagination works its algebra, from the realities which those symbols represent, that as yet the youth felt no uneasiness, but contemplated his new calling with a glad enthusiasm and some vanity; for all his prospect lay in the glow ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... this time but one book in the world: it was a treatise on algebra, given to me by a young woman, who had found it in a lodging-house. I considered it as a treasure; but it was a treasure locked up: for it supposed the reader to be well acquainted with simple equation, and I knew nothing of the matter. My master's son had purchased ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... between the end of dinner and the afternoon start for the harvest-and hay-fields, accomplishing more without a teacher in a few scraps of time than in years in school before my mind was ready for such work. Then in succession I took up algebra, geometry, and trigonometry and made some little progress in each, and reviewed grammar. I was fond of reading, but father had brought only a few religious books from Scotland. Fortunately, several of our neighbors ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... their little manuscript paper:—"Notice: The Professor of Engineering in the University of Edinburgh intends at the close of the scholastic year to hold examinations in the following subjects: (1) For boys in the fourth class of the Academy—Geometry and Algebra; (2) For boys at Mr. Henderson's school—Dictation and Recitation; (3) For boys taught exclusively by their mothers—Arithmetic and Reading." Prizes were given; but what prize would be so conciliatory as this boyish little joke? It may read thin here; it would smack racily ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Algebra and Trigonometry papers dead my first year, and came out seventh.—Bristed's Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... Poor old fossil! If you send him a note you'll make him scratch all his hair off, and he has'nt got much. I would'nt send any of my letters to Mrs. Hall if I were you, you don't know how she is off for thatch, and it will take a power of thinking for any old lady unacquainted with Algebra to find out an unknown quantity. You might address them now to the Post Office, Ottawa, P.O. If I should go elsewhere I will leave instructions at the P.O. ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... inspiration and training that started him on the road to success in life. His biographer says: "When he was twenty-one years of age a Mr. Robert King came into the district to take charge of the school, and under his care young Monro studied in the winter evenings geometry, algebra and land surveying. Mr. King possessed a surveying compass, and gave him practical instruction in land surveying, leading him to decide to follow ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... courts of Granada, of Cordova and of Seville were peopled with poets, or, as they were termed, with makers of Ghazels. It was they who gave us the dulcimer, the hautbois and the guitar; it was they who invented the serenade. We are indebted to them for algebra and for the canons of chivalry as well.... It was from them that came the first threads of light which preceded the Renaissance. Throughout mediaeval Europe they were the only people that thought." The book is dedicated to Edgar Fawcett, "perfect poet—perfect friend" and is embellished ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... to the test of experiment. "Hypotheses which are not founded in Nature please me not," wrote he,—as Newton inscribed "Hypotheses non fingo" on the "Principia." Surely never was such heroic self-denial. Centurial vigils of baffling calculations —(remember, there was then little Algebra, and neither Calculus nor Logarithms)—were sacrificed without a regret except for the time expended, his tireless intellect pressing on to new heights of effort. His first work, the "Mysterium Cosmographicum," is the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... problem in algebra, my master would have understood this look, but it was Chinese to him, and ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... For he, by geometric scale, Could take the size of pots of ale; Resolve by sines and tangents straight, If bread or butter wanted weight; And wisely tell what hour o' th' day The clock does strike, by algebra." ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... ALGEBRA (from the Arab. af-jebr wa'l-muqabala, transposition and removal [of terms of an equation], the name of a treatise by Mahommed ben Musa al-Khwarizmi), a branch of mathematics which may be defined as the generalization and extension ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... been so far, you will have no difficulty with algebra. As to Latin, one of the girls wishes to take up that and I will put you in the class ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... divisions, general works belonging to no division having nought in place of the division number. Divisions are similarly divided into nine sections, and the process is repeated as often as necessary. Thus 512 means Class 5 (Natural science), Division 1 (Mathematics), Section 2 (Algebra), and every ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... almost as soon as he found himself in the schoolroom again. He found himself assigned to a class at one end of the room, where Mr. Tinkler presently introduced a new rule in Algebra to them, in such a manner as to procure for it a lasting unpopularity with all those who were not too much engaged in drawing duels and railway trains upon their ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... the Military College at Sandhurst, but remained there only two terms. By nature he was a studious chap, doing especially well in German and mathematics. So easily did he solve problems in algebra and geometry, that his mates ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... than one signification. It may mean such a symbolic or foreshortened view, such a working hypothesis, as true and full knowledge might supersede; or it may mean this true and full knowledge itself, a synthetic survey of objects of experience in their experimental character. Algebra and language are theoretical in the first sense, as when a man believes in his luck; historical and scientific imagination are theoretical in the second sense, when they gather objects of experience together without distorting them. But it is only to the first sort of theory that pragmatism ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... true loving human soul on another! Not calculable by algebra, not deducible by logic, but mysterious, effectual, mighty as the hidden process by which the tiny seed is quickened, and bursts forth into tall stem and broad leaf, and glowing tasseled flower. Ideas are often poor ghosts; our sun-filled eyes cannot discern them; they pass ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... up his tools resolutely, but he could not work. He fell back on his rough sketch for a lucid Algebra, but his lucid formulae were a blur. He went downstairs and played with the delighted children and listened to the landlady's gossip, throwing her a word or two of shrewd counsel on the everyday matters that came up. Presently he asked ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... are much brighter than others," Dick insisted. "I like study, and am glad I have a chance to go further in it than most young people get. Yet these class dances give us something that algebra, or chemistry, or ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... advancement of this power would have reacted on the mind itself, by enabling and encouraging it to carry on long trains of thought. A complex train of thought can no more be carried on without the aid of words, whether spoken or silent, than a long calculation without the use of figures or algebra. It appears, also, that even an ordinary train of thought almost requires, or is greatly facilitated by some form of language, for the dumb, deaf, and blind girl, Laura Bridgman, was observed to use her fingers whilst dreaming. (59. See ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... itself into that form, and he had grown used to it. He had taught himself a language down here,—if only to know it by sight, and to have formed his own crude ideas of its pronunciation, could be called learning it. He had also worked at fractions and decimals, and tried a little algebra; but he was, and had been as a boy, a poor hand at figures. Was it necessary for him when on duty always to remain in that channel of damp air, and could he never rise into the sunshine from between those high stone walls? Why, that ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... your ignorance of the 'Racing Calendar,' 'Annals of Sporting,' 'Boxiana,' and 'Turf Remembrancer;' question his knowledge of science, it consists in starch a la Brummel{8}; of mathematics, in working problems on the cards; of algebra, in calculating the long odds, or squaring the chances of the dice; he tells you, his favourite book is his betting account, that John Bull is the only newspaper worth reading, and that you must never expect to be admitted into good society if the cut of your ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... If our pew were lined with gray chiffon like my Sunday frock, it couldn't be the same as if my Sunday frock was made of crimson carpet like our pew. How can things that are exactly opposite be the same? You can't prove that they are, except by algebra; and as nobody here knows any algebra, you can't ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... readers of any grade. The author is a professor of mathematics at Cambridge, but his honours are not vaunted in fine unintelligibilities: he writes of common things in a common way, and not, like Hudibras, who told the clock by algebra, or, like the lady in Dr. Young's Satires, who drank tea by stratagem. Would that all professors had written in the same vein. Then, learning would not have been so mixed up with the mysticism of the cell and the cloister, nor the evils of ignorance have so long retarded the happiness of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... exclaimed, his eyes wide with astonishment. "I wouldn't have believed there was as much to know in the entire Universe as I know right now, and I know it as well as I ever knew elementary algebra. Thanks, fellows, a million times—but say, did you leave any open spaces for more? In one way, I seem to know less than I did before, there's so much more to find out. Can I learn anything more, or did you fill me up ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... exhibition. That exception appeared in the Euclid of the entrance class. The mathematics were introduced early in the day. The arithmetic, which dealt chiefly with problems of barter and sale of the various products of the farm, was lightly and deftly passed over. The algebra class was equally successful. In the Euclid class it seemed as if the hitherto unbroken success would come to an unhappy end in the bewilderment and confusion of Phoebe Ross, from whom the minister had asked a demonstration of the pons asinorum. But the blame for poor Phoebe's bewilderment ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... take account of possibilities. Don't you know mathematics are my hobby? Did you ever study algebra? I always have an eye on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... planning a new algebra for school use. If I'm not much mistaken, I can turn out something that will supplant all the present books. Think! If Micklethwaite's Algebra got accepted in all the schools, what would that mean to Mick? ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... the elegant translation of Mr. Melmoth), but not finding any case there exactly similar with mine, I am constrained to beg in my own barbarian way. To come to the point then, and hasten into the middle of things, have you a copy of your Algebra to give away? I do not ask it for myself; I have too much reverence for the Black Arts ever to approach thy circle, illustrious Trismegist! But that worthy man and excellent Poet, George Dyer, made me a visit yesternight, on purpose to borrow ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... all; and a sober man, may be allowed at least to wonder, though he dare not complain, why a new regulation of coin among us, was not then made; much more, why it hath never been since. It would surely require no very profound skill in algebra, to reduce the difference of ninepence in thirty shillings, or threepence in a guinea, to less than a farthing; and so small a fraction could be no temptation, either to bankers, to hazard their ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... of an alphabet, an architecture, a coinage, and an algebra at a period which no scepticism puts much later than 250, B.C., is so undoubted, that they may pass as ethnological facts, i.e., facts sufficiently true to be not merely admitted with what is called an otiose belief, but to be classed with the ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham |
